I am a noob to Earth Reborn and just going through the first sections of the rule book for movement and close combat. Already I have some clarification questions if you guys will humor me.

First, when rolling die for close combat, the rule book has a blank die = to 1 hit (page 10). Is this correct? Or is that considered a miss?

Second, when attacking someone in their rear arc, in many cases the defender gets automatic hits which are added to their defensive score (see picture #11 in the rule book, page 11). That would seem counterintuitive. Shouldn't they be penalized if attacked from behind rather than helped?

DctrJ wrote:First, when rolling die for close combat, the rule book has a blank die = to 1 hit (page 10). Is this correct? Or is that considered a miss?

A blank yellow die in melee is simply a zero and does nothing.

If you look more closely at the example on page 10, it actually reads "zero normal hit". i.e. a normal hit with a value of zero.

Second, when attacking someone in their rear arc, in many cases the defender gets automatic hits which are added to their defensive score (see picture #11 in the rule book, page 11). That would seem counterintuitive. Shouldn't they be penalized if attacked from behind rather than helped?

This actually is a penalty, as the defender will not be able to roll any dice in defending. In this way, the defender has no chance of rolling a Critical Hit, thus is unable to counterattack to cause any damage to the attacker.

Simulation-wise, this represents the character having some limited awareness (a.k.a. "combat awareness" or "situational awareness") of what's going on behind them and a bit of dexterity to dodge slightly (turning to avoid a knife in the kidney, perhaps, but getting cut along the ribs instead), adding that limited reaction to the static armor value.